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Tag: Climate Change

The Financing Development for Development Conference is well under way, and this week's podcast comes to you direct from Addis to give you an update on the negotiations. Owen Barder, who has been in on the conversations, tells you what's being discussed and the likelihood of meaningful results being reached.

Pope Francis has firmly pronounced that climate change is a threat to the world’s poor in a long-awaited encyclical released on Thursday. The Pope is the religious leader of more than one billion Catholics, more than half of whom live in the developing world. But he has addressed the encyclical to “every person who lives on this planet,” Catholic and non-Catholic alike.

The G-7 committed on Monday to “decarbonization of the global economy over the course of this century.” The goal of decarbonization—powering the economy without emitting greenhouse gases—has ascended with dizzying velocity from a plea by activists to acceptance at the highest levels of government.

A new global climate agreement based on voluntary national pledges of domestic action is expected to be finalized in Paris in December. As of now, the 28 nations of the European Union and 9 other nations including the United States, Mexico, and Russia have submitted plans (called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions or INDCs).

Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finally released proposed targets for blending biofuels with gasoline and diesel for 2014 (18 months late) and for the current year (6 months late).

From Cyclone Pam in Vanuatu to record-breaking drought in California, humanity is getting a preview of the devastation held in store by climate change. The pressure is on world leaders to reach an agreement in Paris this December to cut back on climate-changing emissions from fossil fuels and deforestation.

MCC has long applied rigorous environmental safeguards and standards to its investments in partner countries. And since President Obama’s September 2014 Executive Order on Climate-Resilient International Development, MCC (along with other key USG foreign assistance agencies) has been expanding its efforts to ensure that it considers climate change risk—and, where possible, mechanisms for adaptation—in investment planning and execution

The Senate voted today (Thursday) to move ahead with legislation to build the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport millions of barrels of dirty tar sands oil from Canada to the US Gulf Coast, mostly to be refined and exported to other countries (legislation destined for the Presidential veto). Strange, then, that last week the Senate voted 98-1 to approve a resolution stating that “climate change is real and not a hoax.”